Today’s show is about how people converse with artists about their work. We title this show: The Anecdotal Artist and Their Admirers.

We share our stories of what we all try so hard to fake in order to be polite.

Original Broadcast on WOWD-LP: 5/21/17

Sheila and Tom ask each other for a ten-favorites list, with reasons…

On the lists are both the ones that live in their minds like music and the works they’re challenged to understand.

Sheila interviews a couple who have an amazing collection of late 20th century American Art. Don and Ann Brown live in Washington DC in a house that is in itself a work of art. The architect, Richard Neutra, designed their home in 1968 and they’ve lived there happily for 50 years. They’ve been collecting – not for investment – but for the pleasure of living with exciting, beautiful and personal art for the duration of their marriage.

Original Broadcast on WOWD-LP: July 2, 2017

An investigation of the experience of not enjoying an art work, including the show that everyone’s talking about, but few have gotten to see: Infinity mirrors by the Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama.

Original Broadcast on WOWD-LP: April 9, 2017

Revealing Beauty: An Introduction to Japanese Art

Three masterpieces by Kitagawa Utamaro (1753 to 1806) are discussed, with reflections on the “Floating World”, the source of many of these images.

Original Broadcast on WOWD-LP: April 23, 2017

The Philadelphia Museum of Art blockbuster show touted “the rise of a uniquely American medium. Shaped by the genius of Winslow Homer and John Singer Sargent, the watercolor movement tells a story about innovation, experimentation, and the creation of bold new ways of seeing the world.” Sheila Blake and Tom Xenakis explore the many issues that seeing the show brought up for them.

Original Broadcast on WOWD-LP: 5/7/2017

The Highs and Lows of Stuart Davis in Full Swing

Original Broadcast on WOWD-LP: Jan 28, 2017

What made Toulouse Lautrec a great artist was his amazing ability to capture people. In the show at the Phillips Collection, most of the posters are caricatures of loose women and lecherous sinister portly men. He could draw like an angel by the time he was a teenager, and he was able to capture this exuberant time and place. The Belle Époque — full of music and dance and life and debauchery with no rules – but the value in what he captured was immense. He didn’t live long enough to change directions or experiment with the innovations in art that he might have. But he hit his stride early and rode it.

Della Robbia: a family of artists and their competitors in the genre of ceramic sculpture: in Renaissance Florence.

Original Broadcast on WOWD-LP: March 5, 2017

Sheila Blake and Tom Xenakis explore the connections of poetry and visual art.

Original Broadcast on WOWD-LP: Mar 26, 2017